Sequoia Nagamatsu is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor.

Much of How High We Go in the Dark (2022) was written before Covid.

This book is a series of short stories. Some better than others.

This pandemic — the Arctic Plague — starts in 2030 when a prehistoric female came to light having melted out of a glacier in Siberia.

A previously unidentified pathogen from the past was reactivated — and quickly spreads around the world.

How High We Go in the Dark is made up of more than a dozen discrete episodes, separate beads along the narrative timeline from the discovery and release of the virus, through the worst years of the pandemic, on into its lingering aftermath.

The book then leaps 6,000 years ahead, revealing how decisions taken now might lead to radically divergent futures. …

Guardian Review

The virus disproportionately kills children.

The first story is of an amusement park — City of Laughter —where children infected can enjoy one last, fun-filled day before riding a roller coaster designed to kill them.

The second story is excellent. A pig used in plague research learns how to talk.

After that … none of the other short stories jumped out for me. I skipped some.

I really have to quit this book series.

The suicide of Christian Habersaat, a recently retired police sergeant from Bornholm, Denmark, kicks off Jussi Adler-Olson’s underwhelming sixth Department Q novel …

Det. Insp. Carl Mørcks looks into an unsolved case from 17 years earlier that consumed Habersaat’s life—the hit-and-run death of high school student Alberte Goldschmid. …

The story becomes more complicated when Habersaat’s grown son, Bjarke, kills himself and young women start disappearing from the Nature Absorption Academy, a sun cult.

The female characters are gratingly one-note: nearly all their narratives revolve around stealing men or getting revenge on the women who stole their men. …

Publisher’s Weekly Review

Intense. Violent. … I can’t recall a novel with so much distress.

The Sandman (2012) has a really, really good BAD GUY.

“If Jurek Walter reminds you of Hannibal Lecter, with his ability to impel people to act against their own impulse, you’ll be forgiven… As with Jurek Walter’s powers of persuasion, I felt impelled by Lars Kepler to finish The Sandman. The characters got into my head and I couldn’t rest until the mystery was revealed.” – Jonathan Elderfield, Associated Press

As the novel opens, a young man — ill, malnourished and near death — is found on a snowy railroad bridge near Stockholm.

Mikael Kohler-Frost had been missing for 13 years and declared legally dead. Likewise his younger sister, Felicia.

The official police verdict was that the children of popular author Reidar Frost had accidentally drowned near their home.

… he and Felicia had been held captive in a cold, tomblike room he calls “the capsule” and that he managed to escape without ever having set eyes on his captor. The police must find Felicia before she dies or is killed, and so the chase is on. …

Oh, the horror! Why it’s hard to look away, even when a book is full of gore.

Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of husband and wife team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril (born 1966) and Alexander Ahndoril (born 1967), the most popular novelists in Sweden.

The Exchange (2023) — Grisham’s 49th book — is supposed to be a sequel to The Firm (1991) — his 2nd book — but can certainly be read as a stand alone novel.

I liked the book, as always, but it’s — perhaps — not as good as most of the rest.

The big issue ➙ whether or not to pay kidnappers.

Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world.

When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications—and once again endangers his colleagues, friends, and family.

Mitch has become a master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there’s nowhere to hide.

The drama is not legal, but financial, after Giovanna Sandroni, an Italian / British associate, has been kidnapped in Libya and is being held for a $100 million ransom by some murderous villains. This is in the era of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi was dictator of Libya from 1969 until his killing in 2011.

My friend Mike taught at the American School in Tripoli during the Gaddafi. I heard some … stories.